Pink Day co-founder teaches students bullying can happen to anyone

Pink Day co-founder Travis Price talking to students at a Red Cross Youth Symposium at the Ramada Plaza Hotel in Regina to train 100 students from across Saskatchewan to become youth facilitators to help prevent bullying. As youth facilitators, students will provide bullying prevention education to their peers and younger students in their schools and communities.Don Healy / Regina Leader-Post

Some kids may not think they have ever been bullied — but they have likely been teased. Almost every kid has a story though of a friend being bullied.

And that’s the case for Maya Rivera, a Grade 9 student at Winston Knoll Collegiate. Rivera was a small kid growing up and people would tease her about it.

“I’ve never been bullied. But I’ve had people I know that have been bullied quite badly. So I can see how it affects people,” she said.

On Thursday, Rivera along with 100 other Grade 7 to 9 students from schools across Regina and surrounding towns congregated at the Ramada Plaza to attend the Red Cross Youth Symposium and learn about bullying prevention and healthy youth relationships.

The students spent the day listening to presentations on how to help classmates who are being bullied. The hope is students will return to their own schools and teach classmates what they learned.

The symposium was held as part of bullying awareness week and is a precursor to Pink Day on Feb. 22. Co-founder of Pink Day, Travis Price, was in town to lead the symposium.

“(Pink Day is) really a day where kids can go to school and not have to worry about the harmful effects of bullying. But most importantly to me, it’s a day where we have the conversation that bullying is not OK,” Price said.

It was started nine years ago by Price and David Shepherd. A new student at their school in Cambridge, N.S., wore a pink shirt to school and was teased about it.

Price had been bullied himself growing up and knew what it felt like. He and Shepherd decided they needed to do something, so they took to Facebook asking their classmates to wear pink to school. The next day 850 of the 1,000 students wore pink.

“We stood up for our school, we changed that culture within our school and really made a difference. And when I think back and I see that look on his face, that’s something that will stick with me forever,” Price said.

Since then it has grown into an international movement and now includes 33 countries who come together every year on Pink Day and wear pink shirts. Over the years he has partnered with organizations like the Red Cross in order to grow the initiative.

Price travels the world teaching kids about bullying prevention and leading symposiums like the one in Regina. He shares his own story of being bullied and lets students know bullying happens to everyone.

“At the end of the day I wish I had a program like what the kids are going to be trained in today and the Beyond the Hurt program. I wish I had this because I really think it would have helped make the bullying I received a lot better,” he said.

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